In Pirandello’s “War”, the Italian writer explores the reality of war by stripping away the nationalism that commonly serves as justification for this painful endeavor. Similarly, in “The Colonel,” John Cheever uses a colonel to shine light on the dark truths of war in order to illustrate the realities of war and not embrace the same lies. Yet, what both writers convey to the reader is when one speaks the truth in a setting whereby truth is concealed via platitudes, one becomes a dangerous anomaly for others that are blind to the realities of war.
Both texts have a setting that foreshadows the conflicting situation that the main characters face throughout their story. It is interesting to note that the setting the author uses is not random, but rather significant to…show more content… The purpose of this setting is to illustrate the conflicting perceptions that take place throughout the story. Moreover, its purpose it to show that truth is not revealed in black and white, but rather in grey, meaning, both sides of a given argument are needed to discover the real underlying truth. Throughout the story, the “fat” man feeds the “thin and weakly” passengers with platitudes, in order to convince them and himself that their children did not die at war in vain but, instead, were spared from experiencing the “ugly sides of life”. Despite the old man’s optimistic views and his visible nationalism, he is unable to convince a woman who does not blindly accept, but rather rejects, the platitudes that he says as she feels that “the war was taking from her only son”. The woman’s rejection is what ultimately leads the old man to the revelation and truth; that his “son is really dead—gone forever—forever”. The woman is an anomaly to the people who “natural[ly]” embrace the same lies, and her rejection of these lies created the grey situation that the setting foreshadows. More than that, the story takes place on a train to metaphorically convey that all the passengers on the train have
